It takes its name (which is less precisely phrased in the original Polish) from the copper roof, a rarity in the first half of the 18th century.

[5] After 1777 the palace passed into the possession of Poland's last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski (regnal name Stanislaus II Augustus), who hired the architect Domenico Merlini to redesign the rooms and to join the Royal Castle's library wing to it.

When Warsaw became part of the Kingdom of Prussia after the Third Partition of Poland (1795), the palace became a Prussian Ministry of War headquarters.

[5] The left wing and the corps de logis (central building) of the Copper-Roof Palace were deliberately burned in 1944 by the occupying German forces during the Second World War.

[3] The palace is now a museum, part of Warsaw's Royal Castle, and hosts a historic library and a permanent exhibit of oriental rugs.